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Jack Harkness
History Youth and Escapades Jack was brought up on the Boeshane Peninsula, in a sandy beach-like area. He often played with his brother Gray and his father, Franklin. They played cricket and sang around campfires. Then one day an alien race invaded his homeland and killed many of the inhabitants. Jack was told by his father to run away with Gray while he went back for Jack's mother. Jack accidentally let go of Gray's hand while running. He returned to his home hoping to find him, but all he found was his dead father. Jack claims it was the worst day of his life. He spent many years searching for his brother, but never found him. (TW: Adam) Originally, Jack used a different name, though we do not know what it was. (TW: Captain Jack Harkness) He grew up sometime around the year 5000, an era whose attitudes towards sex differed from those prevalent in the 21st century. Humans had begun to expand outwards to explore the universe, and, meeting other species, often pursued sexual relationships with them, regardless of differences of gender or species. (DW: The Doctor Dances) Although human stereotypes of "bisexuality" and "homosexuality" have been applied to Jack (i.e. Owen Harper once indicated to Gwen Cooper that Jack was "gay" (TW: Day One), the most accurate term for Jack would be "pansexual" or "omnisexual". As a young man, he persuaded a friend to "join up" with them to fight against some unspecified enemies that Jack did not describe or name — other than to call them "horrible". Considering Jack's friend to be the weaker of the pair, the enemies tortured him as a lesson for Jack. Jack bore the guilt of his friend's fate. It is likely these creatures are the same as those that tortured his brother Gray. (TW: Captain Jack Harkness) Once, when sentenced to death, he ordered four hypervodkas as a last meal and ended up bedding both executioners (at the same time). (DW: The Doctor Dances) He also had a memorable experience once on a hunting expedition. (DW: Boom Town) As a Time Agent Jack worked as a time agent with partner John Hart. At some point, they spent five years trapped in a two-week time loop, with the two becoming the equivalent of a married couple after spending so much time together (Hart eventually conceded that he was "a good wife", which closed the argument about which of them was the wife). (TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) Jack eventually discovered that the Agency had erased two years of his memory - two years he wanted to have back. (DW:The Empty Child) As a Con Man Having left the Time Agency, Jack became a time-travelling con artist, performing various scams using his knowledge of future events, such as demanding money for items that he knew would be destroyed before the buyer could see it. Finding pieces of space junk and directing them to soon-to-be disaster sites, Jack would intend on selling them to passers by, then allowing the items to get destroyed before the buyers could pick up their merchandise. He would, at some point, improperly acquire a small, sleek Chula spacecraft, fitted for human use, which could turn invisible. (DW: The Empty Child) In 1941, he assumed the alias of an American volunteer Captain Jack Harkness, who had died in action that January. The impostor knew very little about the "real" Jack, other than basic information, such as the former's date and manner of death. (TW: Captain Jack Harkness) While pulling a con with a Chula Ambulance during the London Blitz, he spotted Rose Tyler hanging from a barrage balloon and rescued her, taking her aboard his ship. Quickly deducing that Rose came from the future, he suspected that other Time Agents had discovered him. (DW: The Empty Child) Shortly after, Rose introduced him to the Ninth Doctor. Together, the trio worked to stop the Empty Child plague brought about by the Ambulance's nanogenes. Although he was almost killed carrying in his ship a German bomb about to explode, the Doctor and Rose rescued him just before the ship exploded. (DW: The Doctor Dances) Abandonment Jack was aboard Satellite 5 when the Dalek fleet launched their assault on Earth and was exterminated while defending the satellite from their advance. He was resurrected by Rose Tyler, who at that time had the powers of the Time Vortex which turned her into the Bad Wolf. Jack discovered he was now immortal, although he was unable to rejoin the Doctor and Rose before the Doctor's TARDIS departed, and was left stranded on the satellite. (DW: The Parting of the Ways) The Doctor, who had just regenerated, told Rose that he believed that Jack could begin the process of "rebuilding the Earth". (DW: Children in Need Special). However, this may have been a simple ruse to disguise the fact that the Doctor's instincts told him to run because from this point on Jack became a "fixed point" in time. (DW: Utopia) Arrival in the 19th century After Jack was left on Satellite 5, he employed the Vortex Manipulator in his Time Agency wrist strap to go back to Cardiff, the location of an active space-time rift. Jack ended up in 1869, and unfortunately his Vortex Manipulator burned out and he was unable to leave (it was later repaired by the Doctor but disabled twice by him afterwards). (DW: Utopia) Regardless, he chose to remain in the city, knowing that the Doctor's TARDIS could re-fuel itself using the rift and that the Doctor would one day return there. (TW: Fragments) Jack's second death and resurrection occurred when he was shot in 1892 during a fight on Ellis Island. (DW: Utopia) Jack would find that he still aged, but very slowly, and could recover from any degree of physical harm, including death itself, given a few minutes time. (DW: Utopia) In 1898 he helped save a boy, Anthony, from a Lawphorum, which had fallen to Earth. Anthony, a travelling stage show boy, had failed to predict the future of Jack when he asked him how he would die. Probably he decided to take up this idea and so he joined a travelling show and was billed as "the man who couldn't die" in order to investigate the Night Travellers. (TW: From Out of the Rain) In 1899, Torchwood Cardiff agents Alice Guppy and Emily Holroyd found out about Jack's immortality and about the Doctor. They captured Jack and tortured him trying to discover why he couldn't die and what connection he had to Torchwood's enemy, the Doctor, who they knew Jack had mentioned in various conversations around the city. He was released on the condition that he worked for them, an offer which he intially refused outright. The two asked him to reconsider this option, and Jack wound up in a bar, alone until a young cartomancer offered to read him his fortune. To his immense surprise and bewilderment, she imparted a completely accurate prophecy of The Doctor's eventual return to Cardiff 100 years into the future. Left with nothing to do but wait for a full century, Jack reconsidered Torchwood's offer and began working for them. On his first mission he had to go stop a criminal Blowfish, which he returned to the Hub only to see it killed by a shot to the head. He continued to work for Torchwood for over one hundred years, continually looking for the Doctor. (TW: Fragments) 20th century In 1909 Jack was travelling by train with a group of soldiers under his command, when they were all killed by fairies. Acting out of revenge for running over and killing a chosen one, the soldiers all died by suffocation, each having rose petals forced down their throats. (TW: Small Worlds) Prior to February 1944, he met Estelle Cole. The pair spent some time in London together. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Somehow, however, this never happened, and they lost touch with one another. (TW: Small Worlds) He continued working for Torchwood for about a hundred years, still pursuing his attempt to find the Doctor in the meantime. (TW: Fragments) 1965 in Scotland reveals that Jack delivered 12 children as a gift to the 456 in exchange for a cure for a new strain of Indonesian flu that the 456 claim will mutate and kill 25 million people. (TW: Children of Earth) In 1966, Jack married Lucia Moretti, another Torchwood agent. They had a daughter, Mellisa Moretti, together, who would age normally. Lucia and Jack split up sometime prior to 1977, and at the request of her mother, their daughter was sent into a Witness Protection Programme, relocated and given the name Alice Carter, presumably arising from her mother's fear of the immortal Jack. The application was approved on February 14th. (TW: Children of Earth) Jack became leader on New Year's Day 2000 when the then-current leader, Alex Hopkins, knowing Jack couldn't die, shot to death the rest of the team, before committing suicide himself. That left Jack as Torchwood Three's leader and only member. (TW: Fragments) 21st century Jack recruited Toshiko Sato in either 2003 (TW: Fragments) or 2005 (TW: Greeks Bearing Gifts) and Owen Harper was recruited in 2006. (TW: Fragments) At some stage, Suzie Costello, his second-in-command, joined the team. (TW: Fragments) Jack's activities at the time of the Blaidd Drwg incident in Cardiff - which involved Jack's younger, non-immortal self - are unknown, even though it is known that he was in charge of Torchwood Three and based mere feet from the TARDIS' arrival at the time. (DW: Boom Town) After the destruction of Torchwood One in the Battle of Canary Wharf, Jack still continued to run Torchwood Three. With Torchwood One gone and Torchwood Four having "gotten lost", Jack ran Torchwood Three with more or less complete freedom and decided to run it according to the ideals he thought the Doctor represented. (DW: The Sound of Drums) He took in Ianto Jones, after some heavy persuasion by Ianto himself. (TW: Fragments) Jack, though, held on to the hope of re-establishing contact with the Doctor, whom he believed could help him. He kept the Doctor's hand (which he had lost, but re-grown on Christmas Day, 2006) in a portable hyperbaric chamber in Torchwood Three's nerve centre, the Hub. (TW: Everything Changes - TW: End of Days) Lastly, after his second-in-command Suzie Costello got exposed as a serial murderer and shot herself, he took in Police Constable Gwen Cooper. (TW: Everything Changes) He revealed very little of himself or his origins to his team, even when pursuing a flirtatious relationship with Gwen Cooper (TW: Ghost Machine) and a more physical one with Ianto Jones. (TW: They Keep Killing Suzie) Although he rarely confided in his team, preferring to keep his past secret - Gwen was the first person to learn about his immortality - he nevertheless often showed great compassion for them and other innocents who got caught up in Torchwood's missions (TW: Out of Time), even as he demonstrated a far more ruthless side in dispatching the team's enemies than the Doctor might have exercised. (TW: Countrycide) Transported back to 1941 by the Cardiff rift with Tosh, Jack met his namesake, the original Jack Harkness, and briefly romanced him, before returning to the 21st century. (TW: Captain Jack Harkness) After the Cardiff rift was finally opened by Owen Harper, Jack was forced to confront Abaddon, released from the rift by Bilis Manger. Abbadon was destroyed while attempting to leech Jack's life, though the exertion resulted in Jack remaining dead for three days, his immortality apparently unable to save him. He was brought back to life by a kiss from Gwen. (TW: End of Days) Minutes after his resurrection, Jack noticed the Doctor's hand begin to glow. From inside of the Hub, Jack recognised the sound of the TARDIS materialising, elated after decades of waiting by the knowledge that the young cartomancer's prophecy had been fulfilled and that a version of the Doctor he knew was returning to refuel. By the time the rest of the Torchwood team arrived to investigate the sound, Jack had gone. (TW: End of Days) Reunion with the Doctor Having heard the TARDIS, Jack fled from the Hub chasing after the sound. Seeing the TARDIS and crying out the Doctor's name, desperate to be noticed as he ran, the Doctor (presumably still harbouring a fear or prejudice towards his immortality) once again sent the TARDIS into a swifttake-off, intending to leave Jack behind a second time. In spite of this, and determined by all those years of waiting, Jack leaped into the air and grabbed onto the outside of the ship just as it was dematerialising. The TARDIS reacted extremely violently to this, throwing itself into convulsions as it tried to shake him off, sending the Doctor, Martha Jones and Jack hurtling at full speed into the year 100 trillion. (DW: Utopia) When the TARDIS had landed, The Doctor emerged grim and unpleasantly surprised, though nevertheless very impressed that Jack had managed to follow them to the end of the timeline itself. After Martha briefly panicked (believing him to be dead), Jack resurrected and was finally reunited with the Doctor. In spite of expressing a bitter resentment at being 'abandoned' by the Doctor (an act which the Time Lord casually brushed off), he was nonetheless thrilled to discover that Rose Tyler had not been killed in the Battle of Canary Wharf, a belief he had presumably adopted without the Doctor to confirm otherwise until then. After catching up with one-another, the trio discovered a human being being hunted by the carnivorous, tribal Futurekind, an act for which the Doctor's exteme displeasure leads them to join the chase (an event which rekindles Jack's long-dormant memories of running with the Doctor with vigour) and attempt to save the human by taking him back to the TARDIS. Surrounded, they were instead forced to run to a base where they discovered the last Humans were hiding from the Futurekind. Jack revealed that he has brought the Doctor's Hand with him, describing it as a 'Doctor detector', after they all had met with the troubled Professor Yana. Jack, along with the Doctor and Martha helped to activate and launch the ship headed to the apparent 'Utopia' by entering a chamber flooded with Stet radiation and fixing the power canisters, which would be fatal for a mortal Human. At this point, he confronted the Doctor on his immortality. The Doctor revealed that Rose's lack of control when manipulating the Time Vortex had, as opposed to simply restoring Jack to life instead brought him back permanently, resulting in immortality; the Doctor recognises Jack as a 'fixed point' in the timeline, a fact. Jack, essentially is a living, breathing historical event imprinted onto Time itself, which means he cannot fade away from history, or 'die' as it were. It leaves the Doctor - sworn never to interfere with established history by the Time Lord Code - extremely uncomfortable with any interaction with him. When Yana was discovered to be the Master, the rogue Time Lord took the Doctor's hand and went back in time to the 21st century after stealing The Doctor's TARDIS. Jack, the Doctor and Martha followed in hot pursuit, returning to the 21st century using Jack's Vortex Manipulator to escape from the Futurekind that had been let loose by the reconstituted Master. While Jack attempted to stop the Master, who was Prime Minister as Harold Saxon, he was captured on the Valiant along with the Doctor, but gave his Vortex Manipulator to Martha, allowing her to escape by teleporting to Earth. (DW: The Sound of Drums) After being imprisoned within the Valiant for one year, the Doctor and Jack managed to release themselves, and Jack destroyed the Master's Paradox Machine with a machine gun. The Master tried to escape in the confusion, but a returning Jack caught him as he attempted to get away. He witnessed the death of the Master and later decided to return to Torchwood. (DW: Last of the Time Lords) Coming back to Torchwood Three After being on-board the Valiant with the Doctor and the Master for a year of an erased time line, Jack returned to Torchwood and the team, saving the life of a woman being menaced by a Blowfish. While this took place, there was some Rift activity and his old friend Captain John Hart from the Time Agency appeared in Cardiff. Jack tracked him to a bar, where they reunited with a passionate kiss, followed by a lengthy bar brawl. He told Jack that there were three alien radiation bombs nearby, and the team split up and searched for them. Hart disabled the team one-by-one after conning them into finding the pieces, which he combined with a segment kept by the Blowfish. Though he believed that it would show him the location of a rare Arcadian diamond, in reality it was a DNA-locking bomb, set to kill John Hart. Hart subsequently handcuffed himself to Gwen with deadlock sealed cuffs and he raced to the rift, while Jack and Owen concocted a means of confusing the bombs DNA scanner, arriving just in time to save Hart's life, throwing the bomb into the rift. The resultant explosion caused all of the events prior to Hart's arrival to reset to before he arrived. As Hart left through the rift, he mentioned to Jack that he knew where Gray was. (TW: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) After Jack met Martha Jones when fighting the Master, he invited her onto the team for a few days. He asked her to investigate the Pharm, a medical organization that could cure diseases that were incurable. He ordered Toshiko to close it down. But the Pharm manager shot Owen Harper and then Jack shot him. Martha stayed for a few more days and he put her in charge as Medical officer. (TW: Reset) Jack found the other resurrection glove and resurrected Owen Harper. It worked but Jack had released anextradimensional alien, the embodiment of death, Durac. Owen saved the day by not giving his soul to Death and survived. (TW: Dead Man Walking) Jack met his younger brother Gray again when John Hart came back and bombed a warehouse in an attempt to kill all the members of the Torchwood Three team. This failed and Jack found a message from John on his Vortex Manipulator, which included an appearance by Gray himself. Left shaken, Jack immediately went back to the Hub to confront Captain Hart, leaving the other members of the team to deal with their respective challenges. (TW: Fragments) On meeting John again, Jack was killed before being chained up and made to listen whilst John explains his predicament. Jack's rogue partner then detonated strategically-placed bombs in and around Cardiff, obliterating the city to Jack's horror before forcibly kidnapping him and sending both of them back through time to Cardiff in 27 AD. Here, Jack discovered that John was being manipulated by Gray, whose return is marked by his instantaneous, remorseless murder of his brother. He vengefully forces John to bury Jack alive 20 feet underground in the land that would become Cardiff. Gray, transformed into a merciless, sadistic psychopath by a lifetime of horrific torture had blamed Jack for letting go of his hand when they were children, and wanted Jack to experience a similar never-ending pain by choking on dirt, thrashing on the edge of life every time he revived, only to die again. Before totally burying Jack, John, finally pushed too far by the awareness of how wrong his actions were, slipped a signet ring into the grave with him, hoping that the signal it emitted could be used to locate Jack with the help of Torchwood Three, far ahead into the 21st century. Stuck in a cycle of death and resurrection for centuries, Jack was discovered by Alice Guppy and Charles Gaskell of the Torchwood of 1901, who had picked up the signal of John's ring (an act which confused his Time Agent partner, who had returned to the 21st century to rescue him, thinking that the ring, despite being 'guaranteed 5 millenia', had malfunctioned). Back in the early 20th century, Jack, insistent that he could not be allowed to cross his own timeline (for by now two versions of Jack were present - his past self and present self) demanded to be placed in cryopreservation for 110 years until the present day. Despite being baffled, the two granted him this request and Jack awoke again inside Torchwood Three concurrent to Gray's mayhem - and coincidentally preventing him from finishing off Toshiko with a bullet. Jack forgives his brother of his trespasses despite Gray's own unwillingness to absolve Jack, begrudging him everything. Left with no other option, a tearful Jack chloroformed and cryopreserved Gray, refusing to kill him, but the damage had already been done, as Gray had been responsible for the deaths of Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato. Jack and John part ways on better terms, with John travelling the world in the 21st century, determined to find out why Jack finds the time period so interesting, and Torchwood Three reduced to Jack, Ianto and Gwen. (TW: Exit Wounds) On September the 9th, Martha phoned Jack for help with the CERN's Large Hadron Collider. He, Ianto and Gwen flew there, met up with Martha, and investigated 12 accidents, and found a creature that fed on neutrons. (TW: Lost Souls) The Medusa Cascade Later, when the Earth was relocated by the Dalek's to the Medusa Cascade, Harriet Jones, a former Prime Minister and ally of the Doctor, contacted Torchwood and other allies of the Doctor . After vital information from Martha that allowed him to reactivate his vortex manipulator, Jack to the Doctor, in time to destroy the Dalek that had shot the DOctor. (DW: The Stolen Earth) Subsequently, after the Doctor's regeneration aborted, Jack boarded the Crucible and surrendered to the Dalek forces. In order to infiltrate the vessel, he attempted to shoot the Supreme Dalek and was "exterminated". He subsequently burrowed into the Crucible and linked up with Sarah Jane Smith (to whom he expressed admiration), Mickey Smith and Jackie Tyler. Using Sarah Jane's Warp star, he attempted to bluff the Daleks into calling off the detonation of the reality bomb but was ultimately transported to Davros' chamber instead. Later, after the Daleks were defeated by the DoctorDonna, he helped pilot the TARDIS as it returned the Earth to its original location. Afterwards, he was last seen offering Martha Jones a position with Torchwood, and soon after was joined by Mickey - but not before the Doctor deactivated his vortex manipulator once again, refusing to run the risk of allowing him to travel in time. (DW: Journey's End) Cyberman During the Octopli invasion of London, Jack, Gwen and Ianto were contacted by the Doctor, who asked them if the Octopli had attacked them. They hadn't, but Torchwood had other problems - a Cyberman invading the Hub. It chased Gwen around, deleted Jack and was eventually shot by Jack, and beheaded by Mfanwy. (DW: Conner, Own Problems) Leaving Torchwood Jack, specifically, as part of the team which had negotiated with the 456, was targeted by John Frobisher for assassination after they once more contacted Humanity by using the children of Earth as their mouthpiece. The British government feared that the secret of the deal would come out. They speculated, incorrectly, that the Hub had special properties which enabled his regenerative abilities, and so set out to destroy it, along with Jack. Jack went to contact his daughter, Alice and grandson Steven Carter, to try to understand what had happened with the children. The government, through a ruse involving their agent, Rupesh Patanjali, killed Jack and planted a bomb inside his body before he revived. Back at the Hub, the bomb exploded, destroying both Jack's body and the Hub. The team conveyed Jack's scattered remains to a holding facility. He slowly regenerated his body and returned to life, but Johnson, a government agent, realizing that destroying the Hub had not rendered Jack mortal, had him encased in concrete. His team, who had survived, rescued him. The government subsequently captured Jack's daughter and grandson in order to blackmail him into not interfering with plans to negotiate terms wit the aliens in secret. The next day, Jack and Ianto invaded Thames House to confront the aliens. Stating that they wage war against Humanity, they released a virus which killed Ianto, who died in Jack's arms. When the bodies had been released and Jack came back to life it was apparent that Captain Jack blamed himself for Ianto's death. Jack devised a way to defeat the 456 using a reconstitution wave of a similar wavelength the 456 used to kill Clem, using the children as one vast transmitter, but in order for it to work, the wave needed to be sent via one child. Even though the force of the transmission would kill , his daughter's protests used his grandson Steven as the prime transmitter. The plan succeeded, and the 456 were killed, as well as Steven. Alice severed all contact with him. Jack then traveled the world for six months. He did not find it enough to rid himself of his guilt. Saying good-bye to Gwen and Rhys, he used his vortex manipulator (which Rhys and Gwen had retrieved from the ruins of Torchwood) to signal a nearby cold fusion freighter near the edge of the Sol system and teleported off into space. (TW: Children of Earth) Sometime later, Jack found himself in a bar drowning his sorrows, surrounded by various alien species, when a barman handed him a folded piece of paper which indicated that the man next to him was called Alonso. Looking up, he saw the Doctor - making his parting goodbyes - staring back, before gesturing towards the man approaching the bar. Seizing the opportunity, Jack addressed Alonso by his first name and told him he was psychic upon being asked how he knew him. The Doctor left as Jack continued to flirt with Alonso. (DW: The End of Time) The Face of Boe Jack has mentioned that in his childhood home, the Boeshane Peninsula, as result of being the first one ever (whether of the Peninsula or of the Time Agency generally remains unclear) he had been a poster boy and so was nicknamed the Face of Boe. (DW: Last of the Time Lords) Jack had previously mentioned that he did know of the "real" Face of Boe. (NSA: The Stealers of Dreams) Alternate Timeline If Donna Noble had turned right, instead of left, stopping herself from ever meeting and saving the Doctor, Jack would have lost fellow Torchwood members, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones, who sacrificed their lives to save the Earth from the Sontarans' plan involving ATMOS and would have been transported to Sontar, the Sontaran homeworld. (DW: Turn Left) Harkness, Jack Harkness, Jack Harkness, Jack Harkness, Jack Harkness, Jack